Symantec Fills Out Appliance Strategy With NetBackup 5200 And FileStore N8300

ITCandor had an opportunity to talk with Symantec’s Martin Warren and Norbert Funke ahead of today’s introduction of 2 new appliances. We thought it would be interesting to look at what’s being delivered, what appliances mean to the company and the consequences for partners and, most important of all, customers.

Symantec is filling out its appliances portfolio which already includes its NetBackup 5000 and  Brightmail Traffic Shaper. As we will see neither of the new offerings is a pure appliance: however they are important in spreading Symantec’s software delivery capabilities across three dimensions – traditional licences, Cloud Computing services and appliances. Symantec is playing to its strengths – integrating its software into system devices manufactured by Huawei-Symantec and claiming a number of unique features for both offerings. A successful appliance strategy will have consequences for Symantec’s existing channel and hardware partners: however such things are only to be expected in a market becoming much more centralised and vertical integrated.

FileStore N8300 Offers Online NAS Header Expansion

Symantec has considerable experience in creating software for NAS environments and has used its FileStore software – itself developed over the years from its Veritas Cluster File System – at the heart of this product. In the traditional ‘horizontally integrated’ world its software is a component of NAS solutions built by systems vendors.
This particular offering is the most ambitious in terms of the sophistication and size of the hardware system. It is a rack-based solution which includes FileStore platform software, file server heads (NAS heads), arrays and disks. The number of NAS heads (based on x86 processors) can be upgraded from 2 to 6, which certainly stretches the definition of ‘appliance’. It has been designed to work with both NFS and Microsoft’s CIFS.
This machine is just a file server – there is no specific application integration, although Symantec produced research to demonstrate the rapid movement from block-based to file-based storage. Of course Symantec does integrate its own tools which include anti-virus, archive, backup, snapshots and dynamic storage tiering. The company ran the SPECsfs benchmark, achieving results which place it in third position. It claims that HP’s results also used its software, but used 10GB Ethernet, rather than the 1GB version used on the tested Symantec system. It also claims to have achieved near linear (92%) scalability in stretching the system to 16 nodes.
Symantec claims the product is targeted to run a number of workloads. In particular:

• Archive – with Enterprise Vault built in
• Cloud services – e.g. backup
• File sharing – office files, document library
• High performance applications such as CAD and PACS
• Media – video, audio, print, post production, media distribution, online images (such as ring tones) and social media platforms

The machine is interesting in that the raw storage capacity and I/O performance can be scaled independently of each other, unlike a number of competitive products.

NetBackup 5200 Simplifies Storage, Backup And Dedupe

Back in September Symantec launched its NetBackup 5000 – an appliance dedicated to dedupe activities only. Its latest introduction is the first in a new range of more general-purpose machines, offering backup, recovery, dedupe (at the client and/or media server side) and storage. The 50X0 and 52X0 ranges will continue to separate these purposes – in the USA for instance Symantec has just announced the 5020 – the 32TB version of the original NetBackup 5000 16TB box.
Symantec claims that the new box offers significant benefits to customers for backup activities, especially if they are able to adopt its client dedupe approach. Clearly the reduction in data closer to the source speeds up backup operations in comparison with both those which dedupe at the media server level or in target-based processes. It also claims to be unique in not charging for data replication. The machine is ‘catalogue aware’; giving these machines a deeper level of integration into Symantec’s software than where it is run on other boxes.
Again the NetBackup 5200 is no pure appliance: Symantec prefers to say it’s a solution delivered in an appliance form factor, but with the extra customer benefits of being able to update the software as the hardware inevitably changes over time. We note that it is less narrowly defined than the early machine.
The advantages for customers are in the speed of deployment and simplification of the relationship with Symantec – a valuable improvement for those who already know what they need.

Some Conclusions – Appliance Strategies Will Challenge Existing Partner Relationships

Symantec is not the only software vendor developing appliance strategies. We can see IBM’s move towards ‘workload optimized systems’ or Oracle’s very acquisition of Sun in the same light. Although neither of today’s products can be described as pure appliances, they will help the company extend its reach by providing a different way for users to adopt its software and simplification will be attractive by those put off by the huge array of offerings in its portfolio. The NetBackup 5200 can also help Symantec demonstrate its software to prospects, as it is very tangible.
Symantec is currently using selected partners to sell the new products in a handful of countries. However a successful appliance approach will undoubtedly stretch its existing partnership relationships. Its resellers will need less expertise to help customers deploy these machines in comparison with its licensing model and the server and storage systems vendors may be less supportive now Symantec is in direct competition. In a similar way the server market has had to come to terms with the entry of Cisco with its UCS products three years ago. In response HP and other system vendors launched their own enterprise network products to compete with Cisco’s core business. It is unlikely that any NAS or server vendor would go as far as launching competitive software in response to Symantec’s appliance launches. However we do expect to see subtle changes in partnerships as a result of this and similar moves.
Would you find an appliance easier to deploy than traditional solutions? How would you evaluate Symantec as a hardware supplier? As always please lte us know by commenting on this article.

ITCandor Acronym Buster

CAD – Computer Aided Design
CIFS – Common Internet File Services
I/O – Input/Output
NAS – Network Attached Storage
NFS – Network File System
PACS – Picture Archiving and Communication System
SPEC – The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation
UCS – Unified Computing System